Word: sorkin
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Lambda Co-president Adam R. Sorkin explained his organization’s strategy by arguing that a large demonstration would not be productive...
...that reason. And on the one hand, they have a point. The shows have different formats. (Helpful mnemonic: the one with 30 in the title is half an hour; the one with 60, an hour.) They have different tones: 30 Rock lampoons all its characters, even Liz, while Sorkin, as Michaels says with understatement, "tends to write in a more heroic mode." It's not a zero-sum game; as Reilly notes, "If these were two cop shows, we wouldn't even be having this conversation." On the other hand, come on. Any person not employed by GE is reasonably...
...long-running sketch-show-within-a-show--is forced to kill a controversial sketch about Christians. He goes all Network on his network, launching an on-air tirade about how gutless corporations are "lobotomizing" America. (If there's no two-minute-plus speech, it ain't a Sorkin show.) After he is fired, the new network president (Amanda Peet) persuades former Studio 60 writers Matt Albie (Matthew Perry) and Danny Tripp (Bradley Whitford) to take over and revitalize the show. Complicating their job are a meddling corporate boss (Steven Weber), Danny's announcement that he tested positive for cocaine...
...always, Sorkin proves he can make dialogue skip rope. When a detractor calls Matt and Danny "Barbra Streisand--loving," Matt asks, "Was she calling us Hollywood liberals, or was she calling us gay?" Danny: "It's a fine distinction." Perry and Whitford have fantastic chemistry; squabbling but loyal, Matt and Danny are like a long-married couple but with more passion. (The women characters are much weaker: Harriet is a pretty billboard who serves as the token religious voice, while Peet drifts through with weird detachment, as if she were playing the princess of a small country.) And some details...
...terms of craft, Studio 60 is very good. Sorkin is probably incapable of writing a bad show. But self-satisfied, self-serious and self-congratulatory--that he can do. From the mood lighting and stirring music to the hot-button story lines to the characters' arias on the august legacy of their show, Sorkin makes running a comedy program seem like negotiating an arms treaty. Is your beef with sketch shows that they used to be daring social critiques--("Chizzburger! Chizzburger!")--or that they used to make you laugh? Worse, Studio 60 fails to show us that Matt and Danny...